


Come to Collect

by Atrashbearthattrashes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Before Thor Arrives, Canon Divergence - Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Comfort/Angst, F/F, F/M, Grandmaser's Orgy Floor, Gratuitous Smut, Humor, Interlude, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Lady Loki, Loki/Lyra AU, Multi, POV Female Character, POV Loki (Marvel), Romance, Sakaar (Marvel), Shameless Smut, the collector - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-01-04 03:55:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atrashbearthattrashes/pseuds/Atrashbearthattrashes
Summary: And there, amid the roiling, riotous surge of it all, is her.Slumped comfortably in a high-backed dinner chair, twirling a cherry in her martini glass as she stares right at him.“Something funny, Leathers?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Toot toot. New porn train pulling into the station, frenz. All aboard.
> 
> This is a separate Loki/Lyra fic set in an alternate AU. Wanted to explore some, uh, cultural Sakkaran dynamics (cough) orgy floor (cough).

Loki first spots her at dinner.  
  
It’s in the early hours - days? _Gods, time worked strangely here_ — while he’s still navigating the landscape of this odd trash heap called Sakkar — that he finds himself being stared down at the Grandmaster’s table.  
  
It’s a large table. A regular king’s spread if there ever was one: loud, braying, boozy. Filled with those who curry favor and those in need of it — not very different than when he ruled on Asgard.  There are courtiers, mercenaries, counselors and boozehounds; pink-skinned prostitutes (he’s had his fair share of those); blue-hued guardsmen (he’d rather not deal with them again), and the occasional creature he can’t quite place.  
  
And there, amid the roiling, riotous surge of it all, is _her._  
  
Slumped comfortably in a high-backed dinner chair, twirling a cherry in her martini glass as she stares right at him.  
  
Dark, fathomless eyes drift over his form, cataloguing his clothes, his posture. A head of riotous, dark curls whose color changes with the light shifts as she tilts, assessing him. She pauses, tilts once again, perusing him anew like he’s some strange curiosity she hasn’t quit made her mind up about.    
  
Loki pushes his irritation down.  
  
He’s only just managed to gain the Grandmaster’s favor through a series of finely crafted falsehoods that require him to maintain an illusion of serenity and control; it won’t do to lose his temper over anything so trite as a dinner time stare down. Besides, he’s not sure who she is in this hierarchy. No point in making enemies after only just having arrived.  
  
All the same, he resists the urge to squirm. He’s not used to being the object of scrutiny, especially under an intelligent gaze — not in the part of the galaxy, at least. Even from across the table, he can hear the question in her mind just as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud.  
  
_Who the hell are you, Tall, Dark and Brooding?_  
  
The wryness in her voice catches him off guard. He can’t help but grin slightly.  
  
“Something funny, Leathers?”  
  
Her voice is lower than he would have guessed; tawny and smoked, as if she’s spent a lifetime screaming herself hoarse. The thought brings with it a sudden image of her pinned to the chair, arching as she screams through a shuddering orgasm, large eyes and full mouth open in wide, wondrous abandon.  
  
He stares at his glass for a moment before he lifts his eyes.  
  
“It’s Loki. And I’m not so much amused as impressed by your blatant disregard for a man who wakes up dreaming of public executions.”  
   
They both cast a glance at the Grandmaster, who’s enthusiastically strumming the chords of an invisible air guitar as several men — collared and leashed — obediently dance to the choppy rhythm.  
  
She grins. “That’s mercy here. You haven’t seen the scavengers yet.”  
  
“You mean the cannibals with the colorful masks?”  
  
She flashes him a wolfish smile. “Trust me. You’d rather take the melt stick in the palace than be carrion prey in the stacks.”  
  
“Lovely image,” he says, draining his glass. “Do you mean to put me there?”  
  
She shakes her head, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “My quarrel’s not with you, Leathers. Even if you did steal my chair.”  
  
_Ah._ So that’s why he’d been getting the eye.  
  
“I wasn’t aware there were seat assignments.”  
  
She shrugs, twirling the stem of a fruit in her teeth. “There aren’t. Most people around here know who normally sits there, is all.”  
  
Loki sits back, eyeing her curiously. Everyone at this table is in need of something from the loony despot, but he’s got the distinct impression that it’s the Grandmaster who is somehow in debt to her. Is she some sort of bondswoman? An intergalactic bookie? Someone, at any rate, who’s got his senses on alert.  
  
“And who, exactly, is that?”  
  
She smiles, twists the fruit stem into a knot and drops it in his glass as she rises.  
  
“See you around. Assuming you last.”


	2. Chapter 2

And last he had.  
  
Lyra can’t help but look on in grudging admiration at the silver-tongued prince, who’d managed to blend seamlessly into the Grandmaster’s inner circle with effortless speed.  
  
Though the contest of champions is hours away, he’s already in the exclusive lounge, spread on the big yellow couch, arms and legs akimbo as he regales the court with another drole tale.  
  
Idly, she wonders whether he’s bribed or fucked his way there.  
  
_Either one is an equal sort of prostitution, don’t you think?_  
  
Her head snaps up, meeting his amused gaze as her eyes narrow.  
  
So he was a mind-reader. _Great._  
  
_You don’t enjoy non-verbal communication?_  
  
Lyra throws up a mental shield, cursing inwardly. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy exchanging mental barbs with space aliens that fall out of cosmic anal gateways; it’s that, well…she doesn’t enjoy it with this one. The refugee prince is far too clever by half; cloyingly charming, annoyingly circumspect, and that voice. _Gods._ Like velvet scraped over rock. Low and primal, laden with delicious threat and a dark sort of promise.  
  
It’s enough to make a long-forgotten heat curl low in her belly; sending warmth to places she’d rather not think of.  
  
Turning before her mind can wander any further, Lyra flags down a passing server.  “You,” she commands to the pink woman tottering by on too-high heels. “Where’s the Grandmaster?”  
  
“Still in meetings, Lady Tivan,” the woman replies, unblinking.  
  
So. He was giving her the runaround. _Again._  
  
Lyra tamps down her rising irritation. Though she’s well-liked and well-respected on this planet, accustomed to getting her way through a blend of charm and sheer persistence, there are times — _oh, there are times_ — when a simple transaction becomes a collection, and the diplomacy she usually wields with surgical precision must be replaced by the blunt force of an anvil.  
  
She extracts an obedience disk and slides it atop the tray of martinis, careful to keep her voice low.  “He sees me within the hour, or I drag him here myself. Understood?”  
  
The servant nods, stutters out a reply, and quickly disappears.  
  
Lyra watches her totter off with grim satisfaction.  
  
She’ll get what she came for.  
  
She always does.  
  
A chastising baritone drifts up from behind her. “You might have told me, you know.”  
  
He’s close enough for his breath to stir the hair at her neck, so she purposefully swivels to pick up two cocktails from a nearby tray, placing distance between them as she ignores the heat that flares low in her belly. 

“Told you what?”  
  
“That you’re the Grandmaster’s niece.”  
  
He’s staring at her intently, his knife-blade’s smile disguising the myriad schemes she’s sure are ricocheting through his mind. He has the look of a survivor; one who’s begged, borrowed and stolen his way across the realms  for centuries, and Lyra’s suspicion rises as he continues to smile benignly, a prickle of alarm sounding at the back of her mind.  
  
On the surface, the calculating prince is possessed of the same arrogance she’d first seen dinner. But there’s something bolder about his manner; a quiet confidence that wasn’t there before. Confidence means he’s gained something, and favors aren’t easily gained on Sakaar. 

 _What sort of bargain had he managed to strike?_  
  
Certainly, it couldn’t be on looks alone. Though the prince made for a fine specimen— and yes, she’d briefly indulged in the palace gossip that wagered whether Frost Giant or Asgardian lays beneath those leathers — it took far more than a pretty face to curry favor with the Elder these days.  
  
So because she needs to uncover what he’s about, and not at all because those clever green eyes are still watching her with faint amusement, she lifts her glass, watching him over the rim of her cup as they drink. “Bloodlines don’t carry much weight around here, I’m afraid.”  
  
“Of course not,” he answers dryly. “You’re only the daughter of the Collector. Hardly worth a mention.”  
  
“It’s no boon, trust me. The Grandmaster tolerates me, at best.”  
  
“And you him, from what it sounds like.”  
  
“Isn’t that the way of family?”  
  
Something dark flickers across his features. Unexpectedly, Lyra finds herself wanting to chase it. Discover its source, pry it out of him. A dark tableau abruptly spreads itself out in her imagination: her mouth against his ear, thighs bracketing his narrow hips as she leans over, coaxing secrets from his chaotic, mercurial mind; her mouth pressed against the small V at his chest so she can feel the rumbling vibrations susurrate across her skin.  
  
She represses a sharp inhale when she feels him beside her once again, mouth nearly at her ear, freezing as his next words drip with a knowing arrogance.  

“I know what you want.”

Has he read her thoughts? Is her telepathic Judo so rusty that she can’t block a simple mind-read? But then he’s nodding towards the Grandmaster’s chambers, eyes focused on the heavily guarded door. “I know where he keeps it.”

”Keeps what?”

He slides his gaze towards her, eyes narrowed. “Don't insult me. I know you’re after the Stone. It’s the only thing of real value on this planet and the only plausible reason that the Collector has sent his daughter hurtling halfway across the realms.” 

 _Clever man,_ she thinks grudgingly. _Clever, terrible, beautiful man who’s going to ask me for something I don’t want to give._

”What’s the price of your knowledge?”  
  
“Oh, a small thing. A mere favor, really. I’m in need of safe passage off this planet.”  
  
She tilts back to look up at him—she has to, with him this close—and raises a brow. “On the lam already?”  
  
“I’m going to run out of favor with your uncle at some point. An escape plan seems prudent.”  
  
She considers him carefully. Loki of Asgard is a trickster, a magician, a fox; a man who’s reputation for deception precedes him by light years. But for all his potential artifice, she detects none here. His eyes are clear as he studies her. Waiting for an answer.  
  
“Prove it to me. Show me you know where it is.”  
  
He cocks a brow, brief smirk flaring, and his palm slams against her forehead, everything fading bright white.  
  
_“She can’t have it, Topaz. She just can’t.” The Grandmaster’s reedy voice fills her head. She’s watching his perturbed form pace his chambers from a higher POV—Loki’s, she realizes — but the scene is faded, shimmering, as if she’s viewing it from behind some sort of invisibility shield. “I mean, he’s my brother, and she’s my niece, but, you know. Can’t let go of something like this,” he murmurs. And with that, he tosses the Asgardian relic box containing the Aether, and Topaz easily catches it, tucking the Infinity Stone beneath her arm as she marches out of his chambers._  
  
Bright white again as Loki’s palm lifts, and Lyra find herself back in the VIP room, gasping.

He smirks. “Proof enough for you?”

”Where is it now?”  
  
“That, my dear Lady Tivan, is information given when I’ve secured your promise of passage.”  
  
She’s on him before he can move, pressing a disarmed obedience disk to his neck, but he seems almost bored by the threat.   
  
“Do we have a deal?”  
  
“Sorry, but I’m here for one thing, your _highness_ , and it’s not dead weight on my ship.”  
  
He grins, not a trace of humor behind it. “You’re only putting your father in danger by bringing the Stone back to the Museum, you know: Thanos will destroy everything and everyone to find it.”  
  
“Your concern’s been noted. Now show me.”  
  
He smiles again in that annoyingly smug way, and Lyra’s patience snaps. Popping the disk’s controller from her pocket, she flips it open, slamming the disk against the prince’s pale neck.  
  
…Only to have it go right through him.  
  
She whips around. Sees him standing several feet away. Turns back to what she realizes is a double in front of her, the both of them wearing a bemused expression.  
  
_Come find me_ , they both rasp in her mind, and her bones thrum so thoroughly with the added vibration of his double baritone that that she has to close her eyes briefly to steady herself. She opens them just in time to see him vanish, his double dissolving into thin air as the refugee god disappears in a shimmer of green.


	3. Chapter 3

And she does, though it’s not quite what she’s expecting.

Lyra’s on the warpath hours later, tracking the signal of the obedience disk she’d managed to stick onto the Grandmaster, when she hears the telltale bump of Devo-like music thumping through the halls.  
  
She eyes the small dot on her transponder, pinging from the other side of a large, elaborate door.  
  
There are shouts and laughter, and beneath it all, the unmistakable symphony of moans and pleasured sighs.  
  
_Of course,_ she sighs. _The orgy chambers_.  
  
Lyra taps the code from memory and the doors whisk open, revealing a familiar sight: limbs of all forms and colors, naked and shining under the sheen of neon lights.The smell of sweat and alcohol soaks the air, and around her, dozens of couples are scattered, rocking together in half-present states of drug induced-bliss.  
  
Something skitters across the floor, and she’s not quite sure if it’s an object or alien, when it lands right at her feet with an ominous _squelch_.

Instinctively, she steps aside, walking into a darkened room that leads off from the corridor, and that’s when she sees him.  
  
Or _her_ , rather. Loki is seated in the middle of a large couch, lithe arms sprawled and legs splayed over the shoulders of a particularly skilled Sakkaran courtesan who’s buried between his — _her_ — thighs, one hand on the back of her head, anchoring her mouth to the silken valley between.  
  
Lyra can’t help but gape at the Trickster’s features. They’re undeniably him: green eyes, high cheekbones, smooth jaw — but… _angled_ and feminine, and flushed with heady arousal. Loki’s face tilts back, mouth hung open in half-sunken pleasure as the woman between his legs licks into him with unerring determination, and he reaches down to weave long, feminine fingers into the woman’s hair, murmuring quiet encouragements in a throaty alto that thrums straight through Lyra's core.  
  
Green eyes flick up lazily, take her in. Not the least bit surprised she's there.  
  
The haze lifts in Loki’s expression momentarily, clocking the woman’s wary stance, the surprised part of her lips, and the large, unblinking eyes that stare at him in slight shock and undeniable intrigue.  
  
A slow smile spreads across his lips. “Can I help you?”  
  
_God,_ the arrogance in that voice. Utterly grating and self-satisfied. As if he knows she’d come looking for him.  
  
As if he knows she likes what she sees.  
  
Lyra’s grateful there’s a hoard of bodies between them to block her ability to march over and sock him across the face. She’d spent hours scouring the halls in the aftermath of their encounter, searching for a sign of him, mentally calculating the rising cost of her missed opportunity to find the Stone after he'd told her of its whereabouts. She’d even been prepared to grant him passage on her ship — with a hefty finder’s fee to boot — in exchange for his knowledge.  
  
But now…

Now all she really wants to do is kill him.

Or fuck him. She's still undecided.  
  
If she wasn't embarrassingly wet, she’d march right over and smack the shit-eating grin on his face into the next galactic quadrant.  
  
But the heavy, swollen slickness between her thighs is an unwelcome barrier to immediate action; the sharp longing of need washing through her with gut-clenching intensity. She's gone far too long without being touched, and a sharp pang of jealousy hits her as she watches the trickster easily accept the mindless intimacy so easily offered in this shallow transaction chamber.  
  
Lyra makes a show of dragging her eyes over Loki's form. Down across the pert, exposed breasts that end in peaked nipples, to the lean, curved stomach that flexes with each stroke, to the soft expanse of impossibly long legs, wrapped languidly around the courtesan with commanding ease.

She meets his lust-filled eyes with a neutral gaze.  
  
“Where is he?”

He has the gall to actually hold a finger up, suspending her question as he leans back and shudders. “One moment, darling.”

The Sakkaran is swirling her expert tongue faster and faster, the soft suckle of her mouth echoing across the short distance as Loki suddenly shudders, lithe body clenching in pleasure as she pushes the woman roughly against her, grinding her lean hips against her mouth as she rides out a deep, satisfying orgasm.  
  
“Good girl,” he murmurs, voice thick and sonorous, and Lyra looks up to see that he’s switched back into his male form, pale chest glowing pink under the hue of the neon lights. He tugs the woman up sharply, letting her drape herself over his sweat-soaked form, and sucks an obscene kiss from her still-glistening lips, long and slow and languid enough that Lyra’s sure it’s entirely for show.

At length, he releases the pink-hued creature with a nip and a light smack to her rear. Slowly, he turns his attention back to her. “Now,” he says lazily, eyes-half lidded as he reclines against the chaise. “What did you need?”  
  
“My uncle," she says through gritted teeth. "Where is he?”  
  
“I haven’t the faintest idea."  
  
“Don’t make me ruin your post-orgasm glow with a knife to your ribs.”  
  
A long, slow smile spreads across his sated features. “My, my. Knife play. interesting.”  
  
"Is getting laid all you think about?”  
  
“In these particular chambers, yes,” he says dryly. “And to answer your question: I haven't seen him all night.” His eyes drift over the bodies between them. “Then again, I haven’t been paying much attention.”  
  
_Never the help as usual,_ he hears her mentally snap, and Loki’s brows shoot up in surprise.

Lyra momentarily revels in the shock across his features, her satisfaction slowly replaced by a sinking horror as she realizes that it’s not because she’s chosen to speak telepathically, but because in doing so, she’s let her mental shield down.  
  
Images, sharp and fast, filter through Loki’s mind: of the imposing woman in front of him, seemingly unbothered by the heated chaos around them, straddling his lap as she commands a deep, demanding kiss that leaves them both breathless. Of her thighs, clamped tight around him, fingers in his hair and mouth against his ear as she urges him hard and fast into her aching body. Of her voluptuous form spread wide beneath him, eyes large and pleading as he plunges into her tight, swollen sex, voice hoarse from sobbing his name.

Like a door accidentally left ajar, Lyra's mind abruptly slams shut.

She swallows. Stares at him with an expression that tells him she’s trying to figure out just how much he's seen.  
  
“Bring me the Stone,” she rasps. “And you get your backup plan.”

And with that, she turns on her heel and is gone.

Loki watches her exit, a slow grin spreading across his face. _Oh, this was going to be fun._  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg I'm so SO late on this update. Hope the monster size of this chapter makes up for it. XOXO

_Stupid,_ Lyra fumes, stalking down the hall.  
  
_Fool._  
  
_Idiot._  
  
Two-thousand some-odd years she’s trolled around this galaxy. Never once has someone read her like that.  
  
And how in the _hell_ had it been some upstart Asgardian?  
  
To be sure, the Aesir were a powerful race. But they had nothing on the Elders. Her kind had been kicking around since the dawn of time, birthing cosmic chaos, affecting the very course of history and space-time. _By the Norns,_ she’s witnessed the birth of planets!  
  
That an entitled prince has managed to slip past her defenses is just… _obnoxious._  
  
Outrageous, really.  
  
And maybe. Just maybe…the tiniest bit impressive.  
  
Lyra punches in the access code to her room, frustration propelling her to the bar. Windows stretch from end to end, revealing a panoramic view of the city’s chaos below, and she takes a moment to admire the mad swirl of lights before grabbing a bottle from the shelf.  
  
She lets the heat of the alcohol course down her throat, praying that it burns away the memory of the past hour.  
  
A dark, velvet voice thrumming through her despite the deafening techno-funk.  _One moment, darling._  
  
And that smile. Predatory as he’d leaned over, looking at her from beneath dark lashes. _Knife play. Interesting._  
  
His red-slicked mouth, open on a silent moan as he’d tipped his head back in the throes of —  
  
“Gods be _damned.”_  
  
She slams the bottle back onto the table, nearly cracking the alabaster stone.  Swivels around to the empty room, her rapid, shallow breaths echoing loudly in the cavernous space.  
  
“Shower,” she mutters to herself. “I need a cold shower.”  
  
But her feet won’t budge and her mind is mush. Tapped out, overheated, swimming with thoughts of a dark-haired man whose mere memory sends a sharp throb lancing straight to her core.  
  
“Menu,” Lyra sighs, calling up the room’s interface with resignation.  A holographic screen pops up, chirping obediently, and Lyra reluctantly scrolls through a list of options she hasn’t used in a very, very long time.  
  
Oh, and what options.  
  
For a few thousand credits, she can watch holographic porn or tap into the 24-hour feed piped in from the BSDM floor downstairs. For 10,000, she can slip into a pleasure pod and feel the gentle onslaught of computer-generated hands pleasure her into mindless bliss. For 20,000, she can just call a pleasure slave to her chambers and be done with it.  
  
For a moment, she considers it. Ring up a Sakkaran consort who’d be more than happy to oblige the niece of the Collector. Someone tall, with a penchant for leather…  
  
_Shit._ She sighs, flopping onto the bed.

Anything less would just be a poor imitation, and there’s nothing worse than being desperate enough to settle for a bad substitute.  
  
Wait a minute. _Desperate?_ When in the hell had she become that?  
  
_The minute you walked into that room and saw the God of Mischief getting head_ , her mind supplies.  
  
“Fuck you, brain,” she mutters.  
  
“Fuck you, brain’ is not available,” the screen says. “Please select another option.”  
  
“Go away,” she mutters to the screen, which obediently blinks out of existence.  
  
Leaving her in sudden, utter silence.  
  
So quiet that when she at last slides her hands into her panties, she hears her fingers sink into the wetness with an audible squelch.  
  
_It’s just biology_ , she reminds herself, throwing an arm across her face. _Stupid release._  
  
His hair had been damp with effort; clinging to the side of his face, tendrils against his cheek and neck like an unruly vine flung against pale marble. And his eyes, flashing brilliant emerald despite the dim fluorescence of the room, gazing at her through half-open lids, a swirl of possibilities in their depths.  
  
Her fingers find her clit, stroking and swirling over the hardened nub with mechanical precision.  
  
_Just biology._  
  
She flings her top and pants off, sighing with relief as she stretches against the cool of the sheets, eyes drifting shut.  
  
His hands had been big. Fingers long, tapered. Enough to cup the fullness of the breast peaking through her bra, the tip swollen with need. Her fingertips drift over it, rubbing and coaxing until it stands at attention, desperate for the hot suction of a mouth that could scrape and lave it with unerring focus, the buzzy pleasure unbearable and torturous and deeply, primally necessary.  
  
She arches up at the thought, hips mindlessly seeking empty air as she imagines those hands moving lower, charting a path from her breasts to her ribs, down to the soft cradle of her wide hips, gripping the flesh as his head would descend, whispering words of filth and promise in a low, ragged baritone as he sank between her thighs —  
  
Her womb clenches; she lets out an involuntary whimper.  
  
And hears a soft exhale respond.  
  
____________________________________

  
He’s lounging in a chair by the bar. Long legs spread obscenely wide, features obscured by the dim light, but not enough to hide the ragged need as his glimmering eyes pin her from across the room. His mouth is slightly open, broad chest rising and fall with rapid breaths, and below, a large bulge tents the place where his leathers stretch.  
  
Every inch of Loki’s frame is thrumming with lust, and all of it is focused directly on her.  
  
_Fucking hell._  
  
She wants to crawl up his body using her tongue. Open up those pants, finally get a good look at what the entire court’s been speculating about for weeks.  
  
Instead, she just watches him stare at her. Hand resting on the edge of her underwear, fingers glistening from when she’d yanked them out in surprise.  
  
His hooded gaze drops to them. Tongue darting out to lick his lips.  
  
Slowly, his hand drifts down between his splayed thighs to the large, insistent bulge between them. He cups himself, almost as if it’s a question. Eyes expressionless as they bore into her, awaiting a response.  
  
She stares at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, wordlessly, slides her hand back down.  
  
He lets out a low hiss, eyes tracing her fingers as they start to move beneath the damp cotton.  
  
“Show me,” he demands, voice hoarse.  
  
She sucks in a breath. “You first.”  
  
A deft flick and he’s undoing the placket. Long fingers leisurely wrapping around a cock that’s entirely too large and far too thick for his deceptively slim frame.  
  
Lyra swallows. The thought of taking him into her sends a rush of painful arousal straight to her core. He’s larger than anyone she’s had, at least in the recent centuries she can remember — and when had she last had a lover, anyway?  
  
He arches a brow, smirking. _How long_ has _it been, Lady Tivan?_  
  
She drags her eyes away from his lap to pin him with an irritated stare. “Stop doing that.”  
  
“Doing _what_?”  
  
“Reading me.”  
  
He chuckles, the vibrations low enough to batter her throbbing clit. “Darling, your mind’s been open to me for hours. You’ve been practically screaming my name. Why do you think I’ve come?”  
  
She had _what?_ With — _when?_ She blinks, ignoring his smug look. “That’s — that’s impossible.”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
Her fingers have taken up a slow rhythm against her soaked flesh. He growls softly, eyes never leaving hers as he slowly begins to match her rhythm with his fist.  
  
“We have ancient mental shields,” she continues, voice breathy. “Your seidr is too young to beat them.”  
  
She watches as he pumps himself once, twice, her eyes glued to his impossibly thick head. “Your magic would have to have come from somewhere much older. More primal.”  
  
Something like resentment flickers across his expression. Brief but intense. Enough to make a lightbulb go off in her head.  
  
“So the rumors are true.”  
  
“What rumors?”  
  
“That you’re not Aesir.”  
  
His gaze darkens.“I was Asgard’s prince. A _king_.”  
  
“And what more?”  
  
“Let me suck you and I’ll tell you,” he growls.  
  
Lyra moans softly. The very thought of it brings her to the edge, pulsing with staggering need. She wants to give in to the unbearable, twisting ache that he's caused. Fill the desperate emptiness with his tongue and fingers and ridiculous cock.  
  
But she can’t.  
  
So instead, she spreads her knees slightly, working her fingers beneath the thin, soaked cotton, silently offering this to him instead.  
  
“Is that what you’d prefer?’ he says, eyes darkening. “Bring yourself while I watch?”  
  
_Not prefer, exactly_. _More like what's possible right now._  
  
“Bare. I want to see you.”  
  
She nods. It’s agreed.  
  
He contemplates her for a long, silent moment. Then he turns to the bar and picks up a glass. Within moments, the surface frosts over, coating the tumbler with brittle ice until it cracks.  
  
“Jotun,” she breathes.  
  
“A mere parlor trick at dinner parties,” he says dryly. “It’s what first impressed your uncle.”  
  
“And this is how you read me?”  
  
“Read you, smell you, _feel_ your insufferable lust,” he grouses. “Do you know how hard it was for me to not drag you onto my lap in that room? I almost stopped that sweet little Sakkaran who was licking my cunt so I could grab you and and fulfill every lecherous thought racing through that delectably wicked mind of yours. And you’re right, by the way.”  
  
She struggles for a moment to find her voice.“About?”  
  
“That you would come so hard for me.” His nostrils flare, pupils going nearly black as they dilate with lust. “Your tight little sheath would mold to every inch of my cock. Weep with every thrust. Shudder with orgasm after orgasm as I took you in every conceivable manner and position.”  
  
“Stop it,“ she gulps breathlessly.  
  
“They’re _your_ thoughts,” he says irritably.  
  
“Yes, but they’re so much worse with your voice.”  
  
He chuckles. A genuine rumble from his chest. “Are you done stalling? That poor little cloth between your legs is practically transparent.” His voice drops to a dangerous growl. “Now show me.”  
  
Lyra sighs in defeat. Wriggles out of her soaked cotton underwear and tosses it to the floor.  
  
His eyes drop, drinking her in. Outlining every contour and inch. The intensity of it is too much, so she drops her head and closes her eyes, letting her thighs fall open as she slides her hand down and begins to stroke herself in earnest.  
  
She sighs with relief, the thrum in her body quickly cresting as she rolls her aching clit beneath her fingers.  
  
_What does it feel like?_ he rasps in her mind.  
  
_Wet_ , she thinks. _Aching._  
  
Loki groans. Though she can’t see him, she knows he’s stroking himself to her rhythm. Marble-hard cock pumping, eyes hooded and as they greedily drink in the sight of the woman splayed before him.  
  
_What more?_  
  
Lithe fingers glide to her entrance. She slides one finger inside, and then another. Pumping shallowly as she tests the tight flesh, feels it grip her fingers.  
  
_Tight and swollen,_ she thinks, then helplessly — _but not enough_.  
  
“Not enough?” he asks softly.  
  
She opens her eyes to meet his penetrating gaze. Licks her lips as she contemplates giving him more arsenal, more ways to slip beneath her armor.

 _Not deep enough,_ she confesses. _Need long fingers for that._  
  
“Use mine,” he rasps.  
  
“No,” she says, firmness returning to her voice even as she trembles inside. “You can’t touch me.”  
  
His nostrils flare, his expression turning wry. “You enjoy toying with me too much, darling.”  
  
_Norns,_ it’s not that. If it were up to her, she’d have him pinned to the bed, thighs straddling his hips as she rides him fast and hard, every inch of him impaled deeply inside her. She telegraphs as much through a mental image, and Loki grips himself so hard that his cock nearly turns purple. “Keep that up and I’ll fuck you right here on my lap.”  
  
“Just talk to me,” she moans, fingers working faster as his voice propels her to the edge. “Need...your voice.”  
  
“Imagine my hand instead of yours,” he rasps, breaths uneven and choppy as he speeds up. “My long fingers sliding into that tight heat. Sinking deep, as far as you’ll take me.”  
  
She pulses around her fingers, moaning.  
  
“My tongue on that lovely, swollen center of yours. It’s begging for my mouth. I can taste it from here.”  
  
Lyra moans. _Close. I’m so close._  
  
“Drinking you in, thrusting to lick at your walls until you scream for me to stop. Or would you prefer my cock? Pushing inside, stretching you?”  
  
“Yes,” she pants, body shuddering, hips arching, legs trembling. “Gods, Loki, all of it. _Please._ ”  
  
She only has a split second to register that he’s moving.  
  
Body sliding over hers like a dark, heavy wraith, knees between her thighs. Alarm bells clang in her head as she scrambles back, her mental shields shooting up in panic.  
  
“No!”

But it’s too late. His mouth slants over hers as those long fingers thrust into her slick depths, and then she’s coming: sobbing into his mouth as he drinks in her cry, long fingers pumping in time to the sharp snap of her hips as she squeezes around him desperately, small sheath pulsing around intruding digits that curl deep, coaxing a gush of wetness from deep within as he rides out her climax.

He has only a moment to feel the sweet, wet clench of her around him; her hands fisting his hair, her sob spilling into his mouth.  
  
And then he’s falling.  
  
A haze of stars streaming past his vision and galaxies whipping past, falling so fast that he doesn’t even realize when he lands.  
  
Bone-searing pain. His limbs crushed under the weight of a familiar foot. One that makes his skin crawl and fear clutch his insides.  
  
“Asgardian,” the voice hisses. “You think you know pain?”  
  
He sees himself skewered by the Scepter, the bright glow of the Tesseract deep in his chest. Tearing holes into his mind, something cold and implacable invading him, seeping into every memory, every thought. A hunger that can never be satisfied, an emptiness that can never be filled.  There is nothing but this. The emptiness, the void. He’s bound by it, slave to it. Always returning. Always here.  
  
“Loki!”

He’s pulled back into the room. Finds himself panting on the edge of the bed.  
  
She's sitting up against the headboard, features filled with worry as she reaches for him, thinks better of it, and sits back, gauging his haunted expression.  
  
Her eyes have gone completely black, swirling with galaxies, stars. The promise of infinite universes.  
  
Of an endless void.  
  
His fingers still glisten with her arousal as he leans forward, cold fury in his eyes.

“What the _hell_ are you?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No smut in this chapter, felt a little angst and feelz was needed. Let me know what you think. Extreme angst pornz coming up in the next few chapters.

Loki watches as a wave of emotion flits across her face. Guilt, resignation, a flash of disappointment — as if she knew what was going to happen, but had hoped to be proven wrong — and wrapped around it all, indignation.  
  
“I told you not to touch me,” she grouses. The damnable creature actually has the gall to look aggrieved as she stands, pulling the bedsheets around her like a toga as she pads to the bar.  
  
She pours herself several shots. Downs them in one go. Turns to look at him with those whirlpools of black, galaxies still spinning in their inky, extraordinary depths.  
  
It would be alluring if it weren’t so terrifying. Loki represses a shudder as he remembers the feel of falling into them — into _her_ , his heart still pounding at the memory of the boot pressed into his skull.  
  
_You think you know pain, Asgardian?_  
  
He shoves the memory down and regards her with a cold, calculating eye.  
  
“What are you?” he asks again.  
  
She falls silent.  
  
Long enough so that Loki begins to count his weapons. There are several knives in his dimensional pockets, daggers in his vambraces. If only he had managed to procure an obedience disk…  
  
“Don’t bother,” Lyra says, waving off his mental arsenal count. “Even if you had your daggers, you wouldn’t be able to stab much.” She looks down at herself. “I’m not exactly what you’d call entirely…solid.”  
  
_You seemed solid enough coming around my fingers,_ he thinks darkly, and she flushes before gathering the sheets more tightly about her.“Sit. Have a drink with me.”  
  
He slides onto the stool next to her warily. Her eyes have returned to their normal hue, though her irises are still flecked with starlight, and Loki swears he sees a sun briefly flare before it disappears beneath the horizon of her eyelashes.  
  
“I wasn’t expecting to shift. It usually takes a lot more than…” Her eyes briefly sweep over him. She turns away, flushing, and Loki curses the little somersault in his stomach. _Norns be damned,_ does she actually _like_ him? Even more troubling — does he actually like _her?_  
  
He pushes the thought away. “Shift into what?”  
  
She hesitates. “What do you know of my kind?”  
  
“The Elders? Only that they’re a race of immortals so ancient that they’ve tired of everything in the universe save collecting.”  
  
“Most of them collect material things. My father collects objects for his Museum. My uncle, lost and unloved things.” She averts her gaze, voice neutral, and Loki is grateful for the small kindness. He’s still raw and unmoored by what he’s just seen; his soul laid bare before her, revealing far more than he’d ever intended to. He doesn’t need to be reminded that the universe has pulled him here, along with all the other trash it doesn’t want; a lonely, rejected object, unfit to belong anywhere else.  
  
“For others, collecting is a game of balance. The universe is full of primordial elements. Collecting them is a way to keep the universe in check.”  
  
“And what element do you collect, exactly?”  
  
Lyra hesitates for a moment. “Emptiness.”  
  
A taut silence settles.  
  
“I can’t help it,” she says at length. “I see it everywhere. A void where something once used to be. A place that needs to be filled.”  
  
Loki laughs, but there’s no humor in it. _So you’re what? Some sort of cosmic vacuum cleaner?_  
  
“Charming,” she deadpans. “And fitting, considering I sit in the space between worlds most of the time.”  
  
_Space between_ — Loki rakes over her delectable frame. “So this…?”  
  
She looks down at her body. “A traveling vessel, I suppose. Compact. Easy to carry around. Far less intimidating than my usual form.”  
  
“Why do I know I’ll regret asking what that is?”  
  
She gestures vaguely. “Picture what you saw in my eyes. Just…more.”  
  
Unease settles in his gut. “More…?”  
  
She shifts, radiating discomfort as she peers at her shot glass. “It’s uh, a little hard to quantify yourself when you don’t really…end.”  
  
_When you don’t really —_  
  
Loki’s not quite sure why he does what he does next. Some last ditch attempt to make himself feel like he still has a measure of control; or maybe it’s a vindictive move that’s just meant to throw her off-kilter. Whatever compels him to slam his hand against her forehead, it’s a move he regrets, as he instantly feels his seidr sucked into a force that’s far more powerful and vast than he’s ever encountered.  
  
_He’s in space. Dark. Vast. An arc of colors, nebulae swirling around him as particles collide into a shimmering array of newborn stars. He sees planets; life forms. Stretched across an endless timeline of universes, each one expanding into a rushing nothingness of ever-unfolding…_  
  
“Infinity.” His hand drops. Green eyes shifting to crimson as his nostrils flare, smelling the deeper, primordial magic that he’d sensed lying beneath her deceptively female form.  
  
She was an Abstract Being. The sister of Eternity. Able to manipulate time, space and reality with a mere _thought._  
  
She reads his mind with wry half-smile. “Howdy.”  
  
Loki leans back. Reeling as he struggles to reconcile the absurd difference of the warm, supple thing that had whimpered beneath him moments ago with a force that embodies the very power of the cosmos.    
  
“The legends aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” she says quickly, reading his pale expression. “This flesh-form limits my abilities significantly. Nearly totally, actually. I’m mostly just…old. And tired of racing after objects that lesser beings seek to control the universe with.”  
  
One eyebrow shoots up, curiosity getting the better of him. “You would choose this lesser form over an infinitely more powerful one?”  
  
She looks down at herself and shrugs. “I’ve been in this body for a while. Grown quite fond of it, actually.”  
  
“Evidently,” he deadpans. _Her honeyed mouth sobbing into his. Fingers tangling in his hair. The tight clench of her around him._  
  
Moments ago, she’d been a curiosity to discover, a dalliance to indulge on this chaotic little world of no consequence.  
  
But now… _now_ , she was something he could use. Bed the wanting female to harness the infinite being within. What he could do with the power that ran through that endless, screaming void within her…  
  
_It wouldn’t be a terrible burden either,_ he thinks idly, tracing her form beneath the sheets. Hers was a voluptuous frame, not unlike the women who had once roamed Midgard’s temples thousands of years ago, back when they were still pulling chariots and wielding bronze. Seducing her to gain passage off this planet and molding himself a formidable weapon against Thanos by the same token…well, he’s done far worse to gain far less.  
  
And yet…  
  
_None know your secrets the way she does,_ a small voice whispers. _So thoroughly. Intimately._  
  
“Nor do I _WANT_ them to!” He roars, leaping to his feet so fast he knocks the chair over.

Panic seizes him. Fury and anxiety coiling into a tight ball in his gut. _She knows. Everything._ “ _No one_ should be allowed knowledge that isn’t given freely," he lashes out, furious. Helpless.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, dark eyes radiating apology. “I can’t —”  
  
“ _Help it_?” He sneers mockingly, looming over her. “And what is it you couldn’t help but see in me?”  
  
“Gaps,” she says faintly. “Blank spaces where something once used to be.” Her fingers hover over his chest, palm spreading against the leather. “There was innocence here, once. A place of trust. Belonging.” Her dark eyes pin his. “Love.”  
  
Her hand burns against him. “You dare speak to me of _sentiment_?”  
  
“You are a void," he seethes. " _Nothingness_. You play at inhabiting a body, but this simulacra of flesh can never truly know love, though you yearn for it so desperately, so sadly, with every fiber of your infinitely empty being."

The words are meant to taunt, create distance enough between them so that he can regain some measure of balance. But they lance through her so thoroughly that she slumps over, as if she’s been dealt a physical blow, those gorgeous, fathomless eyes turning a sodden grey. 

A strange sort of relief washes through him as he feels her withdraw. Despair and pain, he can deal with. Resignation and sadness, he understands all too well.

It's the hurt he doesn't know what to do with as she looks at him, eyes filled with betrayal.

As if his own experience with pain should have taught him better.

As if she'd trusted him with something of hers that was hard to gain.  

So Loki does the only thing he knows how to do in moments of vulnerability. He plasters on a sardonic grin, bows mockingly, and blinks out of sight. 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> muahahaahahaha..MUAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 
> 
>  **grins evilly and shoves everyone into the setup/rising tension car**
> 
> regular porn train service will resume in the next chapters.

“Well,” Lyra exhales dryly, contemplating her shot glass: “It could’ve gone worst.”  
  
Life trauma reveals weren’t exactly a cake walk. Especially when they weren’t expected. And especially when they happened during some mind-blowing sex with an infinite being.  
  
She’s seen lesser minds crumble. Or go utterly mad and try to kill themselves.  
  
The God of Mischief had done none of those things. In fact, despite his little temper tantrum at the end, he hadn’t even once tried to murder her, which, with his record, was practically a marriage proposal.  
  
_OK. Too much gin._  
  
She pushes up and off the bar and pads to the shower.  
  
The water is hot, almost scalding. A welcome distraction as she turns beneath the spray, trying, but failing, to not think of the trickster god.  
  
He’d been fun. A little more intense than her usual type. The way he’d looked at her right after she’d shifted — like she’d destroyed every defense and artifice he’d spent so long constructing; like she’d taken something from him he didn’t realize was for the taking…  
  
His rage had been justified. Welcome, even. It reminded Lyra that her little game, no matter how earnestly she played it, was only just that. This body wasn’t real. Her experience as a physical being only a pale substitute for the real thing.  
  
Lyra could play at emotion; pretend to understand love and affection; what forging that strong bond meant. But Infinity was only every really that — an endless everything and nothing, beholden to no one; her very make-up demanding that she exist unto herself, by herself, filled with the ever-expanding life of the cosmos.   
Utterly, completely alone.  
  
_By the godforsaken realms,_ if only he hadn’t touched her.  
  
Lyra shuts the water off, contemplating her next move.  
  
Loki was probably halfway to the Grandmaster by now, scheming up a way to get her thrown into the stacks and eaten by the scavengers. He’d be hell-bent on seeking some sort of revenge after their unfortunate interlude, and he knows the only thing she’s truly after is the Infinity Stone.  
  
Well. She’ll just have to beat him to it.    
  
—————————————  
  
“You little _shit_.”  
  
The doors to his quarters screech open, and Loki leans away from the courtesan straddling his lap to take in the glowering woman staring daggers at him from the crushed entrance.  
  
“Dear me,” he drawls, taking in the damage. “The Grandmaster will surely make you pay for that.”  
  
He collapses back against the couch, head swimming, only to have her face loom over his, flushed with rage. Even at this angle, she’s breathtaking: all fiery eyes and stoic anger, as if she could flay him apart limb by limb and then really start hurting him.  
  
For all the world, Loki can’t understand why that makes his cock twitch.  
  
“You’re drunk,” she says, disgusted.  
  
“Very,” he supplies, holding up a bottle of Xandarian wine. “Vintage harvest. Care for a glass?”  
  
She grabs the bottle, waving it at him. “Is this how you managed to steal the Aether from him?”  
  
“Not steal,” he scoffs, affronted by the very thought. Bloodshot eyes turning up to her. _“Barter._ Ours was a lucrative exchange, sure to make your Uncle extremely rich.”  
  
She takes out a handful of gold coins emblazoned with the Grandmaster’s likeness. “You mean these? Gold you told him you procured straight from Asgard’s vaults, which you have an unlimited access to?”  
  
She uses what bit of leftover magic she has to crush them in her hand, the gold crumbling to a dull grey, and lets the dust fall over Loki and the woman in his lap. The glitter-bodied courtesan shrieks as the crumbs land in her hair, and she scrambles off of Loki before he can even move, six-inch lucite heels clacking along the cold marble as she escapes out of the still-smoking door.  
  
He watches her trot away in dismay. Swivels his neck back to Lyra, irritated. “Unnecessary.”  
  
“Where is it, Loki?” she leans over him, bracketing his frame with her hands. “Where’s the Stone?”  
  
Blackness creeps into the corner of her eyes. His nostrils flare, smelling the air shift around her. For a brief moment, his drunken haze lifts, and he sees the hurt behind her anger; the deep wound she’s not even aware she carries.    
  
He wants her to know her pain as deeply and intimately as he knows his.  
  
_Hungers_ for it.  
  
“Right here,” he says lightly, opening his palm to reveal the box containing the Aether. She makes a grab for it, but her hand swipes straight through.  
  
He chuckles as the illusion dissipates. “Easy, darling. I’ll give you the Stone you if you win my wager.”  
  
His eyes are suddenly sharp. Focused. Lyra leans back, hackles rising. “I don’t do wagers.”  
  
“I’m afraid a wager is all you get. Even if you could kill me, you wouldn’t find where I’d hidden it. And I know you won’t kill me because it’s not in your nature.”  
  
“You presume a lot.”  
  
He stares at her a moment. “And you know things you shouldn’t.”  
  
He leans in until they’re nearly nose to nose. “You accessed memories you weren’t supposed to,” he whispers softly. “Manage to get through the ones I want you to see, and we might just have a bargain.”  
  
Lyra eyes the Trickster’s grave expression, searching for signs of falsehood. “Define _manage_.”  
  
His mouth curls triumphantly. He snaps his fingers.  
  
Lyra suddenly finds herself in a vast room of gold and green with vaulted ceilings, the sound of birdsong in the air and a crackling fire in the hearth.

Outside the window, the Bifrost glitters in the distance, and on the bed, a younger Loki lies, fast asleep.  
  
His mouth brushes her neck as he hovers behind her. “Don’t touch me. Don’t come. And you’ll have your Stone.”  
  
He disappears, leaving Lyra alone just as Loki wakes, blinking at her sleepily, and she realizes that beneath the sheets, he's completely naked.  
  
“Hello, darling. Come to warm my bed?”  
  
Lyra swallows. Oh, _no, no, no_. This wasn’t good at all. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arghhhh, sorree sorree for the delay!
> 
> Any thoughts and comments please are super helpful. I struggled with writing this chapter and would be so happy for some feedback.

_Donkey-headed Asgardian,_ she fumes. _Get me out of here!_  
  
A low chuckle echoes around her. _A wager’s a wager, darling Infinity._  
  
Lyra takes a calming breath, trying to slow her racing thoughts. He had felt humiliated by the memory she’d inadvertently extracted from him. He means to make her suffer for it; render her just as embarrassed and vulnerable as he’d felt when she’d ripped into his mind.  
  
Turning, she makes one last attempt at reason. _You’re aware of what happens if I shift form, Loki. I become the void and drag you back with me._  
  
She feels him hesitate. Then, with a thrum strong enough to vibrate her skull —    
  
_I’ll take my chances._  
  
By the godforsaken realms…  
  
Sighing, she turns to the younger Loki in bed and gives him a faint smile.  
  
“Listen, this is going to sound a bit strange, but — ”  
  
“And you’ve brought breakfast.” Loki grins widely, emerald eyes sparkling even at this distance.  
  
“Can’t have you wasting away,” a tittering voice responds, and Lyra feels confusion roil her as she realizes it’s _her_ voice: higher, lilting, a bit too breathy. Hastily, she looks down. Bare feet. Bare stomach. Pert little breasts.  
  
Norns. He’d put her in someone else’s body.    
  
A nearby mirror hangs against the wall, and she quickly checks herself. Tall, blonde, wispy. Clad in what barely passes as clothing, baubles and trinkets jingling around her wrists and neck as she sashays against the plush velvet carpeting. It’s an unbearably generic facade, as far as courtesans go: the too-high laugh, the nondescript face, a wit no heavier than a dollop of foam on a drink.  
  
But from the way Loki’s looking at her, she could be the goddess Freyja herself. Face upturned, his gaze remains rapt as she feels the woman walk towards him with an exaggerated gait, sliding onto the bed and abandoning the tray as Loki captures her lips in a slow morning kiss.  
  
His tongue invades, gentle and coaxing, and Lyra feels herself moan as the woman eagerly opens to him, hands sliding around his neck, every ounce of her — _them?_ — melting into the drugging kiss.  
  
_Gods._ It’s soft tongues and lazy parlays and playful nips that has her buzzing with arousal in seconds. Lyra shifts, jealousy lancing through her. This was nothing like the violent moment they’d shared. Theirs had been a brutal meeting of teeth and tongue, clashing and invading for a brief moment before everything had collapsed around them.  
  
This was…tender. Emotional. A lazy affection shared between eager, carefree lovers.  
  
She feels wetness already coursing down her thighs. Her thighs or the…? — _Oh, hel_ — and before she can move, the cool silk of the covers shift, and Loki’s hands are on her, thumbs skimming up the soft expanse of porcelain skin as he tilts his head and gives her a bright, full-wattage smile.  
  
Her heart breaks.  
  
Who was this boy with nary a care in the world? She sees nothing of him in the manipulative man-god she’s come to know. There’s no easy smile, no soft eyes full of guileless hope. Impulsively, she cups his cheek, and for a fleeting moment, allows herself to dream. What would it be like be with him so easily, without care or condition? Chase their release together in an afternoon delight of little consequence?  
  
A soft breeze blows through the window, and with it, the trickster’s low chuckle.  
  
Lyra abruptly releases young Loki’s face and sits back, shoving away her longing.  
  
_Well done, Leathers. You’ve made your point. Are we finished here?_  
  
“Not even started, _min kjære_ ,” she feels against her hair, and she turns sharply to see Loki leaning casually against the mantle, watching her.  
  
She slides off of his younger form, standing as tall as she can despite her ridiculous getup, and shoots him a wry look. “If you think this is the first school-boy deflowering I’ve experienced, I’m going to disappoint you terribly."  
  
“What makes you think that any of this is about you?”  
  
Ah. So it wasn’t that he only wanted to punish her; he was enjoying her discomfort. Immensely, by the looks of it.   
  
Before she can retort, he’s behind her, mouth at her ear.  
  
“Now, dear Infinity. Watch, or participate?”  
  
She shudders at the thought. To have Loki beneath her…inside her…to feel every ache and pull of his flesh against hers would be…

Empty. Futile. A reminder of just how artificial all of this is. That she would only be experiencing him through the memory of a stranger's body.  
  
“I want out, Loki,” she demands softly. “Let me — ”  
  
And then the courtesan pulls the sheets off of his younger form and impales herself onto his aching cock, and Lyra forgets how to breathe.    
  
His body is sinewy, power thrumming through every muscle of his lithe form; eyes burning with the same intensity as when she’d first discovered him in her room; and beneath, between the courtesan’s eager thighs, is the broad, pistoning column of his cock, glistening obscenely as it disappears into the moaning woman with slow, even thrusts.  
  
He lets her set the pace. Eyes upturned, expression wondrous and grateful, as if he can’t believe she’s allowing him to pleasure her. Each of his moans a lance in Lyra’s chest as she remembers how harsh and unyielding his own need had been with her; how shuttered his emotions, hidden beneath the thin veneer of baser instinct.  
  
She squeezes her thighs together, attempting to alleviate the wetness there. She's utterly soaked. Throbbing. Each nerve so inflamed that the coarse wool of her breeches against her thighs is torture, the cotton of her shirt against her chafing nipples harsh and punishing.

 _Gods,_ how she longs for his touch. Even just the barest brush…  
  
Abruptly, younger Loki grabs the woman around the waist and shudders, stilling as he groans and thrusts up into her. Lyra bites the inside of her cheek as she watches him empty himself with several sharp, surprised pants, and she feels herself stumble slightly as she struggles to keep her knees from buckling, every inch of her buzzing with unfulfilled need.  
  
Younger Loki leans back, expression wondrous. A trust in his gaze so soft and intimate that Lyra finds herself taking a step back, feeling like an intruder. 

“Now,” he murmurs, kissing the woman’s shoulder. “Be a good girl and take the sheets with you before the next whore arrives, hmm?”  
  
Loki smiles, watching with slight embarrassment, but mostly fond remembrance, as the darling chit on the bed slaps his younger self, tears brimming as she gathers the sheets and disappears from the room, slamming the door with a resounding bang.  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he hears Lyra mutter.  
  
Loki lifts his fingers, prepared to dissolve the memory, when he feels the damnable woman next to him reach out and somehow, _impossibly_ , freeze the moment. She approaches his younger self slowly and places two fingers on his forehead.  
  
Suddenly, they’re in his younger self’s mind.  
  
He's sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in his hair as he sighs deeply.  
  
Lyra feels the deep jumble of fear and longing within him. He’d fallen for the girl and hadn’t known what to do about it. Rather than admit his feelings, he’d pushed her away, self preservation disguised beneath a veneer of casual cruelty.  
  
Abruptly, Lyra finds herself flung out of Loki’s mind and back onto the floor of his Sakaaran suite.  
  
“You wanted her,” she says softly.

He turns away, struggling to organize the clutter of emotions in his chest. How _dare_ she see more of his memory than he’d wanted? How in god’s name _had_ she? And why for fuck’s sake _had he let her_?  
  
His eyes bore into hers with unvarnished rage. “She was a dull, simple creature who needed to know her place."   
  
Lyra traces the tense outline of his silhouette, searching for the right thing to say. She’s angry at having been made a pawn in his little mind game. Furious at whatever has taught him to distance himself whenever he feels a sliver of real emotion. But most of all she’s confused — by how much she hurts for him, how much she wants to _help_ this infuriating, manipulative, impossible man. And jumbled up with all of that is a yawning, insufferable need.  
  
One that starts between her aching thighs and fists itself around her stuttering heart.    
  
“I’m sorry,” she manages eventually.  
  
He turns, mouth curving into a knife’s smile. Menace raging within verdant eyes that she now knows were once capable of tenderness.  
  
“You’re not,” he says softly. “But you will be.”  
  
He snaps his fingers, and once again, she feels herself falling into the dark void of his mind.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SO SO LATE  
> I love you all  
> Please have some more.  
> 

She lands face-first in a dark scullery, _hard._  
  
Knuckles bruised against the stone-cold floor as she scrapes against the tile, struggling to shake a harsh thud from her ears.  
  
A thud that grows louder and rhythmic as she looks up, following the spindly legs of the table in front of her to the woman splayed above it — aged, most probably of noble rank — velvet skirts ruched over her back as Loki thrusts into her mercilessly from behind.  
  
_Oh, for —_  
  
A boot cuts into her line of vision. Present-day Loki looms above her, eyebrow raised in faint amusement as he watches the memory replay itself.  
  
“The Duchess of Svartelheim,” he says, a hint of pride in his voice. “I fucked her in the kitchen while her husband negotiated a peace treaty upstairs.”  
  
“Bully for you,” Lyra manages, coughing the soot out of her lungs as the woman wails into her second orgasm.  
  
The scene abruptly changes. Lyra stumbles back, grasping at a velvet tapestry as Loki leans against it, gesturing like a tour guide to a female version of himself splayed upon a divan while a man sucks him. “Later, I had her husband, who celebrated the signing of said treaty by ordering a girl to his chambers. Imagine his surprise when I transformed back.”  
  
“Wonder of wonders,” Lyra intones dryly.  
  
“Parlor tricks,” he says dismissively, waving his hand.  
  
The scene changes once again, and Lyra stumbles into a mead hall, the sound of raucous laughter and bawdy song echoing high into the wooden rafters.  
  
“They had sons,” he says, and she follows his gaze to a pile of men spread around the fire, bare, sinewy backs arching and falling in the dim light as Loki twines himself around two blonde men, their limbs so entangled that she can’t quite make out where anyone begins or ends.  
  
The memories are cheap. Crass. Not an ounce of fondness for anything save the conquest. And even though she knows this, senses his desperate urge to get under her skin as best he can, her body can't help but respond. Clench with heated desire as wetness pools between her thighs, so strong it nearly knocks the breath from her as she leans against a pillar, pushing as much disdain as she can muster into her tone. “Congratulations. Are we done here?”  
  
“You really don’t understand why I’m showing you this, do you?”  
  
“Beyond the pleasure of punishing me, you mean?”  
  
He pushes away from the wall, amused expression taking on a pensive edge. “Your formless little heart craves something that it won’t find in all this debauchery. Venture down this path, and you’ll only find disappointment."

The words leave before she can stop them. “I was having myself a grand old time until you broke the rules.”  
  
“Is that so?” Loki leans in, eyes narrowing with a dangerous sort of curiosity. “Tell me, then. How do all your other lovers fuck you without falling into a senseless void of torturous memory?"  
  
“All my other lovers,” Lyra says, bristling, “don’t hold memories that have them collapse into a simpering mess of trauma every time I shift.”  
  
_Whoops._  
  
The fury in his eyes is so caustic that she actually feels it burn through her.  
  
She quickly tries to backpedal. “I only meant that —”  
  
“Oh, I know what you meant.” He smiles, humorless. “Pity. You were almost off the hook.”  
  
“Loki—“  
  
He snaps his fingers.

 _Slam._ Another floor, another memory. _Allmother,_ but that fucking _hurts_. Lyra drags herself up from where she’s landed once again, finding the edge of a plush carpet.  
  
It's another Asgardian chamber. Not his; statelier. Older.  
  
A man has his back to her. Stout, grey-haired. Behind him, a young serving maid stands, hands clasped demurely before her.  
  
“You remember the rules?” The man asks, back still turned.  
  
“Yes, All-father,” the girl murmurs. Obediently, she removes a blindfold from her robes, ties it about her head, and, as if she's been accustomed to the ritual for some time, easily mounts the bed and assumes a position on all fours.  
  
The man she calls All-father turns. Lyra sees the guise of Odin shimmer into Loki as he approaches the prostrate girl. The girl shudders slightly, wordlessly bucking as she senses him approach, and he wastes no time running his hands beneath her skirts, hissing when he counters heated wetness beneath them.  
  
“Remember the rules, dear girl.”  
  
“D-don’t look. Don’t ask questions,” the girl stutters, half in fear, half in expectation, and Lyra watches in utter bewilderment as the man she knows as an Asgardian prince leans back, skin rippling and transforming into a creature unlike any other she’s seen.  
  
Soft, azure skin. Carnelian eyes. Markings on his face and hands, and as he removes his clothing, over the rest of his supple form. He heaves a relieved sigh, as if removing a heavy coat that’s grown too hot, and Lyra barely has time to appreciate the lines sketched into the sinew of his thighs and around his heavy cock before he’s flipping the girl's skirts above her head.  
  
Lyra turns to the Loki standing next to her.  “This is…your real form?”  
  
“Depends on what you define as real,” Loki murmurs. In front of them, his Jotun form thrusts into the girl with a deep, satisfied growl, and Lyra shoves down the moan that threatens to escape, insides clenching with another heavy pang of need.  
  
“Why…” she clears her throat, cursing herself. “Why shift?”  
  
“Being King was…consuming,” he reflects, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort.“The throne required extraordinary diligence and effort. Stripping myself down to my essential form, in the short moments I could, felt…immensely freeing."  
  
His eyes flick down to the woman standing next to him, her body unnaturally still as she tries to control her shallow breaths. He can’t help but lean down, mouth agonizingly close to the shell of her ear. “Once again, dear Infinity…watch, or participate?”  
  
_Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t —_  
  
“Show me,” she hears herself say.  
  
Instantly, she’s there. Nestled into the back of a consciousness that’s not her own, a foreign observer at once standing outside of the scene, and yet also a part of it. Though she stands next to Loki, she’s also within the girl’s mind; whimpering at the burn of her knees against the mattress, feeling the tight hold of her fists in the knotted sheets….and _him._  
  
Hard flanks brushing the sensitized flesh of her thighs; big, strong hands curling around the meat of her hips, and in between, buffered by a slick stream of desire, the hard, relentless drag of his cock against her swollen flesh.  
  
A sudden cry. Facedown, the girl announces her muffled release, shuddering from head to toe as she comes with a blood-curdling scream. Lyra feels the clench of her insides around Loki’s immovable thickness, the rhythm of his thrusts growing harsher as he crushes her into the bed, pumping relentlessly.  
  
She tries to move — the barest squirm, but Loki pins her down, animal snarls stilling her crushed form until she’s limp and numb beneath him. She feels something within the girl break; a sort of resigned surrender, and starts at the lone tear that slides beneath the girl's heavy blindfold.  
  
“You terrify her,” Lyra says softly.  
  
“Yes,” the Loki beside her rasps. She turns. He’s watching her, eyes so dilated that they’re an eclipse of black surrounded by a thin ridge of green. A hunger so utterly raw and frenzied that for the first time, she feels unease around his presence.  
  
“Loki…”

“I would use you,” he growls, stalking towards her slowly. “Like I used her."

"No," she finds herself saying, even as she backs up against the wall. "You need more. All beings do."

"I would wield you," he continues, fingers tracing her jaw. "Command your glorious strength and sap you of it, until you were as numb and empty as me.”  
  
“Liar,” she says softly.  
  
He falters, and for a moment she sees a flicker of uncertainty. It’s enough to make her arch against him, pressing the full length of her against his leather-clad form.   
  
His eyes snap down at the contact, cruel and heated. “I will _break_ you."  
  
“I don't break," she whispers. "Or have you already forgotten, _min kjaere?_ "  
  
Growling, Loki hauls her against him, a mess of tangled limbs and frustrated curses as he pushes her against the wall as she twines around him. It’s the slightest shift, the core of her pressed against the hardness of him, but it’s enough.  
  
She cries out, coming, hands digging into his shoulders, thighs squeezing his narrow waist in a futile attempt to ease the ceaseless pulses ricocheting through her as Loki’s desire pours into her with a heated, sharp torrent.  
  
She has only a moment in between shifting forms to grip him, her hands wrapping around his startled form, holding him tight against the sudden, disorienting hurricane of emotion and space time as it bends and folds around them.  
  
_I’m sorry,_ she thinks desperately, terrified for him. _I’m sorry._  
  
And then she collapses back in on herself, once again the void.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- MAJOR ANGST AHEAD --
> 
> smut in next chapter.

There’s blood. Wet-stick tang against his mouth, stuck to the hair across his face.  
  
Above: black space. The leer of Titan’s moons. Below: sharp rock. His own bile spattered across the blood-soaked floor.  
  
Somewhere, a low, ragged laugh echoes, and Loki squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block its haunting rasp.   
  
_He can’t be back. He can’t._  
  
“Asgardian.”  
  
A whisper. One he’d long shoved down, slithers up and around his pounding skull.  
  
“No,” he gasps, horror gripping him. “No, _no —”_  
  
The memories invade. His mother, life seeping from her, collapsed upon Asgard’s floors. The Kursed looming over her. _He told him to take the stares to the left. He told him._   
  
“Please.” His voice isn’t his own. Desperate, broken, the way it was when he first fell.   
  
The laugh grows louder. More memories pushed into his fractured mind.   
  
_His pain. Their pain. Thousands of lives. Half the universe; half of all planets. Their screams. Their blood. All of it, pushing, pushing inside —_  
  
Something inside him bends horribly; snaps. He screams. The excruciating pain brings momentary relief; something else to focus on.   
  
For a moment, he thinks it’s over. He'll be left to die in peace.  
  
And then footsteps in the distance. Coming for him.   
  
———————  
  
Lyra wakes up on a rock. The cold glimmer of starlight above, the constellations foreign to her.   
  
She doesn’t know this part of space; it’s not something she’s ever seen — and hell, she’s Infinity.   
  
A jagged moan behind her. She whips around. Rises slowly on legs that feel like jelly, stumbling towards the figure on the ground, heart pounding when she sees him.   
  
He’s beaten and bruised. One eye socket hollow and crushed; cheek so very pale beneath the blanket of curls matted to his head. He stares blankly into the distance, lost, and when she pushes a strand of his hair back to assess the damage, he doesn’t even blink.   
  
The air is fetid and rank with urine and defecation. It takes her a moment to realize he’s been dragged around in his own filth by whatever has bound him here.   
  
Lyra sinks to her knees, heart in her throat. “Loki.”  
  
He starts. Glassy eyes roll up to meet hers blankly, as if he's staring at a stranger.   
  
“Loki,” she says again. She reaches towards him, gently brushes his jaw. He gasps; pain shooting down his neck, and it's only when she traces her fingers against the bone does she realize it's completely crushed.

_Shit._

Leaning over him, she summons a power she hasn’t used in ages, and cupping his jaw, covers the wound in a thin wave of dark energy, letting the cosmos weave him back together.   
  
Loki feels warmth, then coolness. A strange female creature with black eyes looms over him, concern etched into her features. A flicker of recognition flies past him, almost too quick to catch.

It takes him a minute to realize he can work his jaw. It's sore, but usable. “Know you,” he rasps, still staring.   
  
“We need to get you out of here.”  
  
His laugh is hollow. “No out. Only here.” He rolls over, hand resting limply on his chest. “Only here.”  
  
She leans over, eyeing him. His ribs are crushed; that much is obvious. Body bruised and mutilated in ways that make her shudder to think at the cause; and below the layers of mottled skin and muscle, deep inside, she sees it. A hollowness. A place where something once used to be. As if someone’s ripped out the very fabric of him and left a tattered nothingness in its place.   
  
Tentatively, she rests her fingers over the wound.   
  
“Empty,” he supplies.  
  
“Yes,” she agrees, her calm tone belying the rage within her. _What sick fuck had done this to him — and why? And how in the Nine Realms had he managed to survive?_  
  
“The stone,” he exhales, eyes drifting shut, and Lyra sees it in his mind’s eye: the precious jewel. Pulsing. Binding him to its power. Calling forth its merciless master.  
  
 _Shit._   
  
“We need to go,” she says, trying to keep calm.   
  
He laughs hollowly. _No escape._  
  
Lyra licks her lips, thinking rapidly. She could pull them out of the memory, but wrenching him out of this perceived reality into another would fracture his tenuous grip on reality even further. He’d stay trapped inside his own mind, relegating him to the Mad Titan’s torture forever. The only solution was to rid him of the emptiness; ease the pain so that he might have a chance to realize it was all only a memory.   
  
“Do you want to leave?” She asks at length.   
  
He laughs dryly, as if it’s a joke.  
  
“Loki,” she tries again, leaning over to catch his gaze. “I can help. Tell me."  
  
One blood-shot eye rolls up to her. It’s barely an acknowledgement, as if he’s too afraid to say yes. But it’s enough.   
  
Lyra closes her eyes, hand hovering over his chest. She can feel the emptiness within him, a void of nothingness. It tugs at her eagerly, like a magnet to its true north.

Exhaling, she allows it in.   
  
It pulses into her, thrumming through her veins as it expands into the infinite space within. Resting her hands on his chest fully, she lets it course into her, hurtling the empty into the farthest reaches of time-space she can summon. Sucking the void from his body like poison from a wound, she gathers what light she can find within her and pushes it into him, filling the empty space it with the bright, white glow of newborn energy — the very stuff of starlight and creation.   
  
Loki gasps, eyes widening. He can feel his heart beating steadily, life running through him, strong and sure. His ribs, though still shattered, feel less painful. There’s a lighter space between them instead of a crushing void. And beneath that, he feels it, coursing through the warm spread of her fingers and up into the hollow space: a delicate flutter of awareness that expands into a rushing pulse of emotion, welling up and flooding him with sudden memories: the rage at ceding the throne; the unspeakable loss of his mother; the pain of being cast out; and beneath it all, a dull, persistent ache that he’d long buried, when there was nothing left to hope for.   
  
Nothing left to love.  
  
Suddenly, everything is collapsing back in on itself again, and he finds himself clinging to the strange creature as he whips through time-space once again. Shouting as he's hurled from Titan, the moons of that wretched Hel stretching into oblong balls as light bends around him and snaps, flinging him far into the stretches of the infinite universe.   
  
When he comes to, he’s on the floor of his Sakkaran suite, head cradled in a warm lap as soft fingers comb through his hair.  
  
Against every raging instinct, he finds his traitorous body leaning in to the touch, hot tears coursing against his cheek as words of apology are pressed into his brow.  
  
He weeps.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER SUPER LATE AS USUAL.  
> Many apologies.  
> Here is angst. Please enjoy.

“Another glass?”

Loki barely acknowledges the soft question, laced with remorse; and outright ignores the martini glass dangled in his direction, choosing to focus on the contest in front of him instead. 

It’s been several days since he found himself on the floor of his Sakkaran suite, clutching his shattered chest — with a revived heart now in it, apparently — and a head full of nightmares he thought he’d long buried.

Grandmaster, still pleased with his barter of the Stone for infinite Asgardian gold, had offered him prime viewing for the big match, and so Loki had found himself on a very long couch in a glass box above the coliseum, new yellow cape swirled artfully around his person as he twirls a syrupy cocktail in his hand and tries to forget the shredded madness roiling in his mind.

Except _she’s_ here, too. Sitting a mile away from him on the other side of the couch, but with a stare so intense that she might as well be perched on his shoulder. He turns in the opposite direction, smiling blithely at one of the passing servers to eschew her searing gaze. 

“Darling,” he says lightly, handing her his glass. “Another, if you please.” 

He gives the girl a small wink, ignoring Lyra’s steadfast gaze, and leans back, his calm facade belying the seething rage within. 

He was _furious._

Lyra — Infinity — whatever the damned hell she was — had shoved memories into him as if stuffing a rag doll with straw. No thought to the consequence and wholly without his permission. But what burns him most beyond the violation is that she _knows_. She's seen the torture firsthand, the unbearable pain, the way he’d been stripped of his very mind.

_Gods damn her to Hel._

Involuntarily, his hand drifts over the space she’d healed, long fingers spread over the leather. 

“Feeling any better?”

Loki starts. She’s now sitting right next to him. He stifles the urge to turn and throttle her, and instead, focuses on the match.

The contest is brutal, as ever. The contestants ill-matched, inevitably set up for failure if the Grandmaster’s knowing grin is anything to go by. He watches the violence idly, absorbing each fatal blow, the arcs of blood, so far away that they seem almost a mist, and when he turns to set his drink down, he finds that she’s still staring, large, luminous eyes rimmed unnaturally bright.

“Talk to me,” she murmurs, voice laden with emotion. _“Please."_

Lyra studies his stoic expression, hoping for any hint of a crack in his defenses. She knows he’s furious with her; had been since he’d let himself weep in her lap, beating a hasty retreat once he’d returned to his senses. She still remembers how he’d looked at her; like she’d given him something he hadn’t known was missing; that he loathed having it once again; _hated_ her for having returned it. 

He’s still ignoring her, laser-focused on the contest. As she prepares to stand, admitting defeat, his voice drifts over her quietly. “Is that what happens every time?”

She pauses. “Not always, no. It depends on the willingness of the psyche to heal.”

“And mine was willing?”

“Very.”

He takes a moment to digest this. 

“Can you only heal in your natural form?”

She hesitates. “This human form is limited. It’s far easier when I’m in my full power.”

“And that can happen willingly?”

Irritation prickles her. “As I said before: this form is a heavy construct. I can only shift it with great effort or intensity.”

“In other words,” he drains his glass and sets it down decisively. “In order for me to restore myself to my full capacity, I would need to fuck you. Repeatedly.”

_Wow. OK. Uh…_

“I wasn’t aware you were so keen on…um, self-restoration,” she manages, suddenly feeling very flushed and lightheaded.

“I wasn’t aware it was an option until today,” he says darkly.

He’s standing now, a lull in the contest providing him the perfect cover as guests mill about, oblivious as he stalks towards her, dark intent in his gaze as he crowds her towards the exit. She has little recourse except to backpedal, stumbling over the couch and through the doorway before he catches her by the wrist, shoving her into a nearby room that’s somehow devoid of beings. 

Before she can muster a coherent thought, he’s leaning into her, regarding her with a look that’s somehow clinical and feral at once. 

“Your form: how long have you had it?” 

She looks down at herself, momentarily thrown by the question. “A few millennia, give or take. I modeled it from the statues the humans constructed during their Bronze Age. Why?”

He ignores her, long fingers toying with the lip of her short jacket. “They had temples for us as well, when they worshiped what they did not know.”

She eyes his angular features. Unearthly. Beautiful. “Do you miss it? The adulation?”

He barely offers her a glance, eyes still roving over her body.“Don’t you?” He slides his hand upward, spanning the length of her ribs with one long palm. “Oh, that’s right. How could they worship you, if you had no form to show them? Foolish Infinity,” he tuts, tone warm and dangerous and thrumming with undeniable power. “You’ve played this game entirely wrong. This vessel is utterly unfit for what you’re after.”

Lyra looks down. Except for breeches that encase wide hips and a tattered bomber jacket that her breasts often get in the way of zipping up, she’s always figured she was par for the course of any two-legged species. Before she can ask him what he means, he’s leaning into her, eyes hot as they rake over her.

“If you only wanted sex, you would have taken on the guise of a whore,” he says plainly. “But this is not that.”

“I don’t know what you —”

“Worship. You took the form of a goddess in the age of human worship.” He turns, eyes blazing with lust and — she realizes now — anger. “You are no mere seeker of physical sensation. Your lovers can do nothing less than offer complete submission as they prostrate themselves at your altar, as you would have me do now that I — that you — ” He shakes his head, collecting himself. “What game do you play? What do you want of me that you have restored that which I wished to keep buried?”

He watches confusion wash over her; that perfect, round mouth opening and closing wordlessly as she searches for an answer. “Loki, I —”

“Do not lie to me. Least of all to me.” When she offers nothing further, something within him snaps. He tangles his fingers in her hair, desire, madness and desperation forcing her upwards so she can look nowhere but at him. He tugs the tresses painfully. “What did you _do_ to me?” 

Lyra searches his gaze. It’s wild, unmoored. “Nothing you did not want done.”

Loki growls, the sound so feral that Lyra feels her body shudder from head to toe. She barely has a moment to breathe before his mouth slams over hears, cruel and punishing.

He takes. 

Teeth clash over soft lips, bruising and marking them with cruel intent. He presses his thumb into her neck, goading her to tilt up, the angle easier to plunder her mouth. Loki feels her lips easily part, regret and submission in the parlay, and he invades, sucking on her tongue and swiping through the hot cavern as if branding her with his taste. 

He wants to hurt her. Take from her as she took from him. If he could, he would have her here against this very wall, stripped and impaled upon him as he took from her body what he could not take from her soul; try to wrest a modicum of control and power from the woman who took everything and gave it all back. He wants to punish her for her power over him; her tenderness in returning what scraps of himself she could; her sorrow in doing so. He wants to make her feel unimaginable pain, but he can't. So he wrenches her jacket aside, clamps his teeth at her jugular, and bites down enough until she cries out softly in pain, arms thrown up in instinctive surrender.

“You’re right.” 

The words are barely a whisper. So soft he almost doesn’t hear them. But when he pulls back, fighting the lust and fury still coursing through him, he sees only regret in her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

She steps back, expression twisted with hesitation before she girds herself and with an elegant conjuring gesture, reveals the glittering Aether in her palm. 

Rage and something like reluctant admiration bloom within him. “How in the _Hel_ did you—“

“I saw it. In your memory. When I was healing you. I saw where you hid it.”

Cold realization washes through him.“That’s why you healed me.”

“No,” she says vehemently. “I may be cunning, but I’m not cruel. I certainly didn’t plan on landing in your mind, least of all where you — ” she stops, voice softening. “Don’t stack me next to your foes, Loki. Healing you was a side effect of our…entanglement. A fortunate one that lets us skip through the part where we fight and bargain and in the end, betray one another for what we are both after on this godforsaken planet.”

He lets the truth of her words seep into him enough to cool the lust still singing in his veins. Before he can muster a response, he feels a light touch on his chest. Her hand is on him, over the place she healed. “I never planned on returning the Stone to my father,” she says, eyes traveling up to meet his. “I’d planned on putting it somewhere Thanos would never find it.”

The hand on his chest turns, fisting itself into her own breast. Realization dawns. “No,” he says, a strange, unpleasant heat coiling within him. It takes him a moment to realizes its fear. _For_ her. “Lyra, you cannot think to hide the Stone within you.”

“He would never find it,” she says simply.

“It would destroy you.”

“They are Infinity Stones,” she says patiently. “Who can tame them but Infinity itself?”

“I have seen them at work,” he says, tracing the line of her very human collarbone. He thinks of Jane Foster and the Aether; of himself, the Tesseract. “Its destruction is subtle. You would not recognize it at first. But slowly, over time, it would unravel you. Render you…unknowable to yourself.”

“That is precisely the point,” she says. “Don’t you see? The Aether is the stone of power. I could use to split myself into Infinity and…this.” She looks up at him, reading the confusion in his eyes. “I could finally be free.”

He chuffs disbelievingly. “You have traveled the universe to find an object that would separate you from yourself, so you might become something _less_?” 

“Infinity's not all it’s cracked up to be,” she deadpans. Then, looking down, because meeting his gaze is too much: “For what it’s worth, splitting myself seemed more like a theory than a real course of action until fairly recently.”

She falls silent. Loki takes a moment to digest it, the implication as absurd as it is humbling. 

“You would rend yourself from immortality and omnipotence for a foolish tryst? For pain, and disease, and all the horrible tragedies that a mortal life would bring?”

“I would like to think I'm risking my life,” she grinds out, "for a slightly higher ideal.”

"And what idiotic thing would that be?" he challenges. "Sentiment? _Love?"_

She gives him a small, helpless shrug, and it is this gesture above all that completely undoes him. "It's only that we’ve both been alone for such a long time. I thought, perhaps...we might at least try to do it together."

This time, it’s her that disappears before he's able to process that she’s gone. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frenz Im SORRY I was gonna post one mega chapter of porn but I'm behind.
> 
> Here is prelude.

_“Madman. I will skin you alive.”_

Lyra starts awake, head swimming. Where the hell had that come from?

_“Treacherous bastard!”_

The voice is dark. Thunderous. Shouting through her skull with enough vibrato to make her brain shake. 

Blearily, she squints into the pitch-black room, trying to suss out the intruder who’s managed to break into her suite despite the heavily warded door. But before she can pull her sleep-addled thoughts together, the voice shouts again, a wordless roar that has her doubling over in pain. 

“Fucking hell,” she mutters, clutching her skull. The tone is so venomous that it takes her a moment to recognize it. Underneath the rage, there’s a tremor there: one she knows all too well. Stark realization washes through her, and she sighs, forehead bent to the sheets. 

“I need to go find him, don’t I?” she mumbles into the bed. 

_“I will kill you where you stand!”_

Lyra throws the covers off, allows herself a brief stretch, and shuffles off to discover what trouble the God of Mischief has gotten himself into this time.

—————————————

 _By all the Norns and the bloody Fates, what was she_ doing _here?_

Loki firmly avoids looking at the woman who's come to a screeching stop in the Grandmaster’s chambers. Even without looking, he can feel her staring at him. Her mind is, as ever, gratuitously open, and he seizes on her temporary shock to scour the rest of her psyche.

There's bewilderment. Worry. Pity — which he hates, and beneath it all, an undeniable curiosity. Despite his current humiliated state, Loki manages a wry smile. _What’s the matter, dear Infinity? Never seen a man tied up before?_

 _Oh, Loki,_ he hears her sigh. _What have you done?_

He’s chained. Stripped and on his knees. The metal chains binding his arms and legs are held tight by several dead-eyed guards, and though the room is shadowed, Lyra can still make out the corded strain in his shoulders as he struggles to stay upright as several obedience discs shock him continuously, bright-white volts searing his bare, blue chest with shuddering pain.

Wait _. Blue?_

Lyra blinks again, convinced it’s the neon lights casting his usual creamy tone a shocking hue. But as she looks closely, she notices elegant whirls of cobalt over his corded arms; soft lines scored into cerulean skin flanking broad shoulders and a sinfully tapered waist. 

Lyra tells herself she's seen him like this already. The memory he'd shown her of himself in his natural form had even been gratuitous in its revelation. She remembers the cool hue of his back flickering in dim chamber light as he'd rutted into that poor servant girl, hips flexing in a practiced, feral rhythm. She remembers his arms on either side, caging the girl, his back an immovable barrier above as behind, he had thrust mercilessly, burying himself in her —

She shifts, cursing as she feels sudden and unwanted slickness between her thighs. As if sensing it, Loki's crimson eyes shine up at her with cruel amusement. “See something you like?"

“Hey, now, hey. That’s no way to speak to a guest,” the Grandmaster tuts. Loki watches as his torturer smoothly glides past him, melt-stick held casually as he hovers towards Lyra on his mobile air throne. “Oh hey there, darling niece. What uh…what brings you up here so late?”

Lyra’s cool gaze lingers on Loki a moment before she meets her Uncle’s eyes. She shrugs, affecting boredom. “Heard you’d racked someone up. Figured I’d come take a look.”

“Oh, you mean this? Him?” He turns to Loki, melt stick close enough that it singes several strands of his hair. He growls, which only seems to delight the Grandmaster further. “Seems as though our resident Lord of Mischief is a shape-shifter. Comes from a, uh — ooh, a planet of ice and storm.” He wiggles his fingers at Loki, winking suggestively, and Loki stares back defiantly, murder in his gaze.  

“Seems that this, mmm….” He snaps in the air, searching for the words — “Jotun, has been a naughty little blue boy. Trading me fake Asgardian gold in exchange for that nice little bauble I gave him in good faith.” Grandmaster leans over Loki, hovering inches from his face. “He’s just downright refusing to give it back to me.” He casually tosses the melt stick into his other hand as he turns to Lyra. “What would you do about it?”

The question is so unexpectedly rational that Lyra is momentarily thrown. “What would I do?”

He tosses the melt-stick again, crossing his legs as he considers Loki thoughtfully. “You travel all around this Galaxy, prying things out of un-pryable hands. How would you, uh, go about getting my treasure back for me?”

She rounds Loki and tugs on one of his chains, testing its strength. “Have you tortured him yet?”

“Not yet, no. Would that be a fun sort of confessional scene, you think?”

She spares Loki a quick glance. _Do you trust me?_

His eyes flare with defiant anger. Inwardly, Lyra sighs. _Please, Leathers. Just this once._

He holds her gaze a moment before giving her the barest tilt of his head. 

Abruptly, Lyra grabs his chain and yanks him to the floor. Loki lets out a surprised grunt. He stumbles, eyes turning impossibly redder as he lets out a string of dark obscenities she’s sure are cursing her to several rings of hell. 

Unmoved, she turns to her uncle, voice smooth and laced with authority. “Leave him with me for a few hours. I promise you’ll have your Stone back, and a penitent Jotun to boot.”

“Penitent. Ooh. I like the sound of that,” the Grandmaster coos, eyes sparkling with interest. “Don’t play too rough now. I need him in one piece.” He gives Loki a last once-over before gesturing to them both. 

“You’re on the clock.”

————————————————————————

Lyra can feel curious eyes on them as they make their way through the halls. 

Even for Sakkarans, it’s a strange sight: an otherwise normal-looking human leading a blue man by a long chain, his posture not in the least bit cowed by his servitude as they wind their way through the upper suites of the Grandmaster’s most exclusive floors. To a casual observer, it could be a night’s paid entertainment, or the latest contender up for a fight. 

But the menace in Loki’s gaze is what throws the whole guise. Even with her back turned, she can feel its heat boring into her, his hatred tangible and hot as a poker in her side.

“I should have flayed both of you alive to spare me this humiliation,” he mutters darkly. 

Lyra tugs on his chain, short and pointed. “Cameras,” she reminds him lightly, gazing up at the hidden eyes silently watching them from the ceiling. Seething, he sends a slew of curses in that same unknown language into her mind, and Lyra can’t help but roll her eyes as she clicks open her door.

She ushers him inside her room, aware of the prying eyes that tilt to watch the last sliver of Loki’s bare back recede into her room and leads him across the wide expanse of her living room.

“Enough, woman,” he growls, hands prying at his neck. 

“You will concede, thief,” she declares, and pulls hard enough so that he stumbles forward, into the bathroom. 

Once inside, she abruptly drops the chain and turns up the room’s soothing ambient soundscape as loud as it will go.“Sorry. This is the only room I know isn’t rigged with some sort of lens.” She hands him a robe and turns, waiting for him to clothe himself. 

God knows it had been hard enough for her to ignore the wide expanse of smooth blue skin when they’d been in public. Here, in private, Lyra trusts herself even less, and flushes as she remembers that the last time he’d been in her chambers, he had been more than happy to show her everything she’d wanted to see. 

She tamps down that memory and hazards a glance backwards to find him staring at her. 

“What?”

“You might thank me,” he says, eyes flaring indignantly as he dons the rob. “For not giving you up.”

She turns to the vanity, rifling through her toiletries. “He wouldn’t have believed you. He knows if I had the Stone, I would have left by now.”  
   
“And yet here you are.”

She sighs, shoulder slumping. “Yeah, here I am. Saving your ass. Stupid me.”

A brief something flits through his chest — not quite guilt, but some pang that makes him fall silent. 

Before he can respond, she asks: “Can you manipulate cameras? Play a scene on endless loop?”

“I suppose I could,” he says slowly, thinking it through. “It would be an illusion, after all.”

“Then powder up,” she says, tossing him a makeup compact. “You’re going to be a star.”

—————————————————————————

Hours later, Loki and Lyra quietly make their way through an empty docking bay, steps furtive as they avoid the guards who crowd around a bank of security cameras, watching the live footage streaming from the main building. 

It’s grainy and low-lit, but clear enough: the Jotun prisoner who had stolen Grandmaster’s precious treasure is on his knees in the chambers of Mistress Tivan, chain wrapped tightly around her hands as she wrenches a confession from the penitent savage. The feed cuts out abruptly when she yanks on the chain too hard, accidentally cracking the hidden camera lodged in the ceiling, but _she’ll get him yet,_ they nudge one another, grinning. _Grandmaster always gets his way._

“You didn’t have to pull that hard,” Loki grimaces, tugging at the cloak that hides the red marks around his neck. 

Lyra ignores him, focused on the security panel in front of her. “I had to make it look real enough.”

“It will be real enough when I strangle you in my normal form,” he mutters, coming up behind her to punch in the security code. Even clad in a long, hooded cloak, there’s no disguising the raw power that thrums from him, and Lyra resists the urge to press herself against his long torso, still abuzz from the proximity of his barely clad body prostrated before her just hours before. 

In truth, it had been difficult maintaining any sort of distance since they’d put on their little performance. Despite his rancor, a performing Loki was an amenable Loki, and Lyra was surprised to discover that  she’d enjoyed spending time with the mischief-maker in an environment that didn’t consist of death threats or one-upmanship. Bonded together by a common goal, they had worked together towards a solution with steadfast civility. No angry quips, no lust-addled segues, no memory dives and no poking at old, traumatic wounds. Just two people, quietly working out a way to survive.  

To her chagrin, she found that she had liked it. 

Liked _him._

A _beep!_ on the console drags her back to the present, and Lyra barely manages to wrench open the hatch to her ship before angry shouts echo behind her and a laser blast skims the rim of the cockpit. They turn just in time to see several guards racing towards them, alarms blaring as the barrier to the docking bay slams shut, trapping them.

“Hang on!” Loki dives into the pilot's seat and powers up the ship, ducking as Lyra lunges over him to release the weapons lock. Thrusting the small ship forward, Loki tilts them sideways, pausing to let her momentarily blow a hole through the docking doors before he powers them forward, speeding through smoking metal as they burst out into the grey Sakkaran skyline, deftly evading several skyscrapers and a massive wormhole that belches out several cars above them.

Still leaning over him, she engages the cloaking deflectors that camouflage the ship. Slowly, it melts into the grey, mottled skyline as several of the Grandmaster's jets race past, shooting into the empty air.

Triumphant, Lyra rummages beneath her seat, pulls out a bottle, and wags it at Loki with a slow smile.

“Shots?”

—————————————————————————

"I have a deal for you."

"I thought you said you didn't want to speak while drinking."

"I didn't. Until I thought up this deal."

They’re lying on their backs, staring up at the myriad wormholes belching out trash from Sakkar’s skies. A nearly empty bottle of her best moonshine lies between them, and she can feel the metal emblem of his shoulder pad pressed against the bare flesh of her upper arm.

Despite his still-blue form, he radiates warmth and maleness, and she wants nothing more than to roll over and burrow herself into his side. Instead, she curls her arms beneath her head demurely and turns, waiting.

Loki flicks his eyes over her. The normally stubborn set of her jaw is lax; her expression soft. Her mouth purses slightly, as if debating how to frame what she's about to say, and when he catches himself staring, he turns back to the sky, slinging out a half-hearted barb.

“I’m not fishing for rubbish in the stacks, if that’s what you’re proposing.”

She just smiles and shakes her head. There's something in her eyes that fills him with unease. It looks a lot like anticipation. Even worst, hope.

“I’ll give you the Aether back to do as you see fit with it. If you help me."

Unease catapults to fear. “Help you do what?”

“Split me from myself. From Infini —”

“No.”

“Loki — “

 _“No.”_ It comes out harsher than he means, and he rolls away to avoid her wounded look. Pouring himself another shot, he gathers himself. “I won’t be responsible for your undoing.” 

“It’s not your — it’s my choice, you insufferable Asgardian,” she snaps. 

“You’re really selling me,” he deadpans.

“Loki.”  Warm, lithe fingers hesitantly reach for his. Gently trace the ridges swirling along his fingers, down to his palm and wrist.  Arousal, faint and unwelcome, stirs at her innocent touch, and he’s unable to pull his hand away when her eyes meet his, large and guileless. “I’m asking as a friend.”

It’s enough to sober him.

Up until a few hours ago, Loki hadn’t really considered the possibility that they were anything more than co-conspirators by circumstance. Pawns in a game too complex for either of them to navigate alone. For Loki, the universe was a vast game of chess, where alliances were nothing more than bargains to be struck at opportune times and dissolved just as quickly. He had recognized that same shrewdness in the woman before him; had respected it even, as one opponent to another. To pretend that they were anything more would stray into an area of sentiment that he avoided out of a healthy sense of self-preservation. Sentiment led to attachment; and attachment got you killed. Especially in places like Sakkar; especially by powerful forces like an Abstract Being. 

And yet, despite his careful calculations, she’d somehow managed to creep beneath his defenses, aided in no small part by a psychic connection that tore at his wounds, shoving unwanted, painful, beautiful memories back into him that made him…

Gods damn her, that made him _feel._  

He flips their hands so that he’s tracing her skin, fingers gliding over a warm palm that thrives with a lively, nervous pulse. Once again, he catches himself marveling that so human a vessel could harbor such a boundless, inhuman creature within it. Gently, he pries his fingers from hers, voice laced with regret. “I can’t give you what you need, darling Infinity.”

Lyra nods reflexively, masking the sharp hurt that lances through her. She’d let an impossible notion take root: that perhaps, this errant God of Mischief who had landed in Sakkar’s trash heap had not just come across her path by accident. That despite the utterly frigid indifference of the universe, she had somehow been given a boon from a benevolent corner of that vast, dark void — a small sign in the form of an irascible man-god who, despite his rage and ego, had given her reason to hope. That perhaps, there was a way out of the loneliness. That there was something more. 

She draws her knees up, curling in on herself as she contemplates the skyline. “Would you still help me?” she says after a moment. “If not to find it with you, then with…someone?”

It's said with a soft uncertainty. So unlike the brash woman Loki had first encountered at the Grandmaster’s table who’d boldly stared him down. Who had watched without shame as they’d bared themselves to each other in her chambers, two lonely individuals reaching for a brief moment of connection. He remembers the way she’d looked at him after she’d collapsed on herself the first time, eyes filled with remorse and despair. The way she’d held him as he wept; gently and without judgment, recognizing his pain as her own. 

And yet despite all of it, he feels something within him harden. Sharp and instinctive, it lashes out. “No."

She draws back. “What — ”

“You restored memories I did not wish to have returned,” he says coldly. "You forced me to a terrible place I had long buried, and left the job half-done. You say you collect emptiness? Then take it. All of it. Restore me fully, and I will help you.”

She hesitates. “Loki, I can’t heal you in my normal state. You risk going back to — ”

“The Aether can bend reality to its will, when properly harnessed. You are one of the few beings in the Universe that can wield its full power. Use the Stone to control your form, and I will help make you free.”

She meets his eyes. “So, you want me to…”

“I can smell you, Lyra,” he growls.“Ever since you stumbled into the Grandmaster’s chambers and hauled me up and down that godforsaken palace like a dog on a chain, all I have been able to sense in this damnable form is you. Your insufferable want. Your infuriating _need.”_ He looms over her, eyes raking her up and down her as she sits back on her heels, staring up at him in shock. "You're dripping for me even now. Growing wetter by the moment."

He downs the last of the bottle, eyeing it momentarily before he turns to her with a knife's smile, crimson eyes radiating predatory lust. 

“So, darling Infinity, what shall it be? Remain a slave to your emptiness, or fuck a monster for your freedom?”

 

 


End file.
